Atheist Quotes

The following is a collection of atheist quotes that I have accumulated from the interwebs, television, literature, friends, and others. Some of these quotes are by atheists; some are by theists. Some are intended to be humorous; some are quite serious. Strangest of all, some of these quotes you might find used by theists to defend their own position. In the context in which I appreciate them, I believe they serve as support for my own views. The common thread among all of these quotations is that they represent a piece of my view on atheism, humanism, science, and the recklessness of religion.

“People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)” — Douglas Adams

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams

“The divinity of Jesus has made a convenient cover for absurdity.” — John Adams

“The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.” — Abu Ala Al-Ma’arri

“Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.” — Henri Frederic Amiel

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” — Susan B. Anthony

“Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.” — Isaac Asimov

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.” — Isaac Asimov

“If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.” — Isaac Asimov

“I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.” — Isaac Asimov

“My spell-checker lacks the word ‘creationism’ in its dictionary, so each time that word is encountered, an alternative pops up at the bottom of my screen, ‘cretinism'” — E.T. Babinski

“Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.” — Francis Bacon

“How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares ‘God wills it thus.’ Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“A soul you say? Give my pocketwatch to a savage and he’ll think it has a soul.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.” — Daniel Boorstin

“If God cannot be taken literally when He writes of the rising sun, then how can one insist that he be taken literally when writing of the rising of the Son?” — Gerardus Bouw

“To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.” — David Brooks

“Imagine the ego of the human race, to consider themselves so grand, as to warrant a creator worthy of praise.” — Robert Brunswick Jr.

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” — Sir Richard Francis Burton

“What’s ‘God’? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you.” — Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)

“History teaches us that no other cause has brought more death than the word of god.” — Giulian Buzila

“When ideology is involved, truth is the first casualty.” — Tim Callanan

“Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.” — George Carlin

“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” — George Carlin

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” — G. K. Chesterton

“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.” — Arthur C. Clarke

“Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?” — Arthur C. Clarke

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” — William Kingdon Clifford

“Some Christians use the Bible much as a drunk does a lamppost — more for support than for illumination.” — Rev. William Sloane Coffin

“Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” — Chapman Cohen

“Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family.” — Steven Colbert

“Today’s religion will be the future’s mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever.” — Steven Crocker

“It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.” — Charles Darwin

“Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.” — Richard Dawkins

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” — Richard Dawkins

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” — Richard Dawkins

“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?” — Richard Dawkins

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” — Richard Dawkins

“He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.” — William Drummond

“I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul…. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end.” — Thomas Edison

“I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake – Religion is all bunk.” — Thomas Edison

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.” – Albert Einstein

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.” — Albert Einstein

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” — Albert Einstein

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.” — Albert Einstein

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” — Epicurus

“We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn’t been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.” — Catherine Fahringer

“If god is the alpha and the omega. The begining and the end, knows what has passed and what is to come, like it states in the bible, why do people pray and think it will make any difference.” — Mark Fairclough

“A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.” — Quellcrist Falconer (via Richard K. Morgan)

“It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.” — Ludwig Feuerbach

“I’ve yet to find anything convincing about the arguments Christians make for the existence of this God chap, and feel, that if he does exist, events such as the Holocaust, Cambodian massacres and Limp Bizkit illuminate the fact that he’s been asleep at the wheel for quite some time.” — Wil Forbis

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” — Sigmund Freud

“When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” — Sigmund Freud

“I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflic in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’.” — Mike Fuhrman

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.” — Galileo Galilei

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi

“Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.” — Edward Gibbon

“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.” — Stephen Jay Gould

“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that’s what He’s getting.” — Jack Handey

“When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmm, boy!” — Jack Handey

“If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth?” — Ryan Hanson

“If we expect God to subscribe to one religion at the exclusion of all the others, then we should expect damnation as a matter of chance. This should give Christians pause when expounding their religious beliefs, but it does not.” — Sam Harris

“People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.” — Sam Harris

“The creator who could put a cancer in a believer’s stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.” — Bret Harte

“If we are going to teach ‘creation science’ as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.” — Judith Hayes

“Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.” — Robert Heinlein

“Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other ‘sins’ are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful — just stupid.)” — Robert Heinlein

“Religions are all alike — founded upon fables and mythologies.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” — Thomas Jefferson

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.” — Penn Jillette

“The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can’t agree on whose fairy tales to believe.” — Ed Krebs

“There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.” — Richard Lederer

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.” — Abraham Lincoln

“What has been Christianity’s fruits? Superstition, Bigotry and Persecution.” — James Madison

“In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.” — James Madison

‎”Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” — James Madison

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.” — Ferdinand Magellan

“I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.” — Bill Maher

“To even win a nomination in this country, you have to say you’re a person of great faith. You have to pledge to the people out there that you put your faith in things that are unable to be proven — that you suspend critical thinking as the way to go.” — Bill Maher

“In New York, Catholic groups have forced an art gallery to shut down an exhibition of a six-foot image of Jesus in chocolate. So, the Archbishop of New York was very upset. He said, ‘It is appalling to make Jesus out of food! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go bake some communion wafers.'” — Bill Maher

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” — H. L. Mencken

“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.” — Wilson Mizner

“Jesus’ last words on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here.” — Donald Morgan

“Religion is an act of sedition against reason. Whatever religion is most seductive and likely to draw in victims to surrender their skepticism is the worst.” — P.Z. Myers

“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is no God. There’s no heaven. There’s no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you.” — Madalyn Murray O’Hair

“An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.” – Madalyn Murray O’Hair

“If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it.” — William A. Orton

“It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead — I declare that he has never been born. It is a created fiction, an invention, not a discovery… It is man-manufactured fiction. Certainly it has given consolation, but consolation is not the right thing! Consolation is opium. It keeps you unaware of the reality, and life is flowing past you so quickly… Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth. The very desire to find the truth disappears. But in the beginning it is bitter if all your belief systems are taken away from you. The fear and anxiety which you have been suppressing for millennia, which is there, very alive, will surface immediately. No God can destroy it, only the search for truth and the experience of truth — not a belief — is capable of healing all your wounds, of making you a whole being. And the whole person is the holy person to me.” — Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” — Thomas Paine

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” — Blaise Pascal

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” — Paul of Tarsus, I Corinthians 13:11

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” — Emo Phillips

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.” — Robert Pirsig

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.” — Terry Pratchett

“Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further.” — Jack Pritchard

“No amount of belief makes something a fact.” — James Randi

“The market for nonsense is infinite.” — James Randi

“Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.” — Frater Ravus

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” — Stephen Roberts

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.” — Gene Roddenberry

“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.” — Ernestine Rose

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” — Bertrand Russell

“Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” — Bertrand Russell

“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.” — Bertrand Russell

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.” — Bertrand Russell

“What happens when we’re dead? The irony is that all our questions wil be answered after we die. We spend our whole life trying to figure out the truth and the only way we’ll find out what it is, is to get hit by a bus. And the only comfort that religion offers is that God is driving that bus.” — John Ryman

“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there’s no place for it in the endeavor of science.” — Carl Sagan

“Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.” — Carl Sagan

“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.” — Carl Sagan

“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.” — Carl Sagan

“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” — Carl Sagan

“At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.” — Carl Sagan

“Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.” — Roger Scruton

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” — Seneca the Younger

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we’re just making him madder and madder.” — Homer Simpson

“I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.” — Edith Sitwell

“I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble.” — Azura Skye

“Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that.” — Ronnie Snow

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” — Socrates

“It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous.” — Gloria Steinem

“A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.” — David Stevens

“What has been said of [God] is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man of common sense.” — Paul Henri Thiry

“If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.” — Paul Henri Thiry

“All children are atheists — they have no idea of God.” — Paul Henri Thiry

“Man is the religious animal…He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.” — Mark Twain

‎”It’s not those parts of the Bible I don’t understand that scare me — it’s the parts I do understand.” — Mark Twain

“Most people can’t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?” — Mark Twain

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that WE are the ones that need help?” — Mark Twain

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” — Mark Twain

“Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.” — Laurens Van der Post

“Gods dont kill people. People with Gods kill people.” — David Viaene

“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

“Only sheep need a shepherd.” — Voltaire

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” — Voltaire

“Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.” — Voltaire

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate.” — Richard A. Weatherwax

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg

“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.” — Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

“Atheism is a requirement for a complete human being. Religion is a crutch that is shackled to you, one you never really needed in the first place, but were convinced by others that you couldn’t live without. Once you discover it’s only an illusion, that it’s not even a real crutch, you discard it gladly.” — Brent Yaciw

“So you really think that God would plant a bunch of bones in the earth to test your faith? Either you’re in denial or God has some serious self-esteem issues.” — Coral Yoshi

“The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.” — Frank Zappa

“Religion might be helpful in death, but education is helpful in life.” — Anonymous

“Nothing so liberates the heart as when a fool awakes from his folly.” — Anonymous (seen in the movie Cabin Boy)

“To err is human. To forgive is not our policy.” — Anonymous

“Why be born again, when you can just grow up?” — Anonymous

“Only the fool says in his heart: There is no god – The wise says it to the world.” — Anonymous

“If all the Christians who have called other Christians ‘not really a Christian’ were to vanish, there’d be no Christians left.” — Anonymous

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.” — Anonymous

“People who don’t like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn’t have such funny beliefs.” — Anonymous

“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.” — Anonymous

“Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence.” — Anonymous

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.” — Anonymous

“Deaths in the Bible. God – 2,270,365 not including the victims of Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers were given. Satan – 10.” — Anonymous